"I see. Well, that's convenient for these purposes, then."

"There was likely some maneuvering to arrange for our city to take point on reinforcements, but it's not out of character."

"You are rather more concerned with information security here than I am. Do you expect any particular precautions to be called for in arranging the meetings?"

"We'll make arrangements. To be frank, it'll be impossible to conceal the fact that you're meeting with people; we can only conceal the contents of those meetings. It's another reason I prefer that our business be conducted in Manus where possible."

"It's not too unusual for me to make house calls."

"Yes, someone is bound to be injured on duty, and we'd only need to play it up to cover for a visit. It can also be the pretext to invite you to Manus—we do actually have men whom we'd pay for you to heal, if you'd like to be able to be able claim it and not simply allow people to draw conclusions from the timing.

"Another thought I had was backdating the Voyager's nominal conscription to prior to the platoon's dispatch, if you go that route, and recording this as her first deployment, which makes it harder to draw a causal link between your visit to Manus and her release, since you were concerned about that."

"That seems fine to me if it's fine with her."

"She said that she would prefer not to be conscripted for military service even nominally, but will take it over nothing, and she's also not in favor of dragging her tribe into this, so it'll depend on the details. We'll workshop the conditions more on the way and you'll be able to discuss with her directly when she's here; I'd suggest not reaching out to the Silverfangs yet."

"Understood."

"So, to confirm, you're happy with speaking to the Voyager when she arrives as a prisoner with the incoming deployment in two weeks, and coming to Manus in exchange for her release if on consulting with her the arrangement is to your satisfaction; the cover story we are presenting is that someone in Manus want to hire you for healing; the Voyager's release or conscription may be backdated to obscure the connection; and we're striking out the confidentiality carveouts to talk to the Silverfangs or to research relevant Skills until further notice. Is all of that correct?"

"I was considering the recommendation to avoid those last two things a polite agreement, not a binding one, but I don't plan to actually do it, I just don't think you can unilaterally unmake exceptions to confidentiality agreements."

"We didn't actually agree to first exception, as I recall, only discussed it as being on offer provided negotiations go in the direction where it makes sense, and the second I did make a more substantive offer on an exception for up to two consultants, but I interpreted the suggestion that we release the Voyager first and you confer with her as a counter-proposal—I don't remember my exact words, but I'm not going to die on this hill; if you feel strongly about the second one you can have it, but if you don't plan to I'd prefer to eliminate the optionality explicitly to minimize moving parts. There are a lot of things you could say which would contradict whatever narrative we eventually go with."

"I can take more notes going forward to make sure we're clear on things like that, though if someone searches my office that will compromise information security quite a bit."

"Do you have a code, from where you're from? I'm not expecting your office to be raided, but infiltration if or when you're away from the city is within possibility, and the building is scryable. If you're consulting someone you should ask to meet in a warded room, or I can lend you a wand like the one I'm using to protect our conversation, though such measures would themselves be a flag to anyone surveilling you.

"Perhaps as a simpler measure I'll just take greater care to explicitly differentiate the discussion of term changes from the going into effect thereof."

"The codes I know are not to be used outside their original context. I can write in any of the three languages besides this one that I know, but my understanding is that there are Skills that can work around that pretty trivially."

"I believe so. There might be ways to work around it, since translation Skills and Spells don't work on decoding ciphers, but I'm not familiar enough to make recommendations."

"I assume it doesn't count as a cipher if I just render one language in another's alphabet?"

"Translating alphabets is the most common use of the spell, as far as I know, so no."

"Alas. Can you relate your present understanding of what I am committed to?"

"For the initial agreement: the contents of our conversations are confidential for eight months or until if you discover it to have been made on false pretenses, with exceptions for Ambassador Tanivv Riverscale who is in Liscor, and Wall Lady Rafaema and Dragonspeaker Luciva Skybreath who are in Manus—the third one I'd previously left unnamed, but that's who it is. This means you should not relay any information provided in these conversations to any third party not excepted, either directly, through deliberate implication, or through negligence. There is some room for interpretation for the last, but under present conditions I would not consider ciphered materials stolen in a break in to be negligence, and would count leaving unciphered records on an open page in a scryable location you frequent.

"For those excepted parties, it's also specified to only speak to them on relevant matters under suggested precautions, which I haven't provided yet but can describe now: you should request a private appointment for a confidential matter by letter to their public mailing address, without enclosing any confidential information, and follow the instructions of the response to attend it."

"For exceptions after the initial agreement: I don't consider the local Silverfangs' exception to be granted; that was discussed in the hypothetical of using them as the cover story. The exception for confidentially consulting up to two experts on the matter of Skills I'll allow was granted, and we were just discussing if you would let us withdraw it."

"Understood. In this case I'll abide by your interpretation of the place where our recollections differ but do not represent that this will always be my approach."

"Was there anything that was surprising in there, apart from the last exceptions? For my calibration."

"I think I might need to know more than I currently do about how scrying in the local paradigm works. On Golarion scrying works on creatures and unattended records would not be conventionally scryable, though I couldn't rule out a specialist with an unusual trick, and the person scrying me would probably need to try several times with scarce spell slots or have specific targeting resources or both in order to be confident of landing the spell on me unless they were exceptionally powerful."

...Right, he was thinking that the Select was a veteran fort commander, and didn't consider a different world might imply different magic and operational constraints.

"[Scrying] is a Tier 3 Spell, meaning most accredited [Mages] are strictly capable of casting it but need substantial investment of study and practice to learn and maintain competence at it, so in practice most [Mages] don't have it as it trades off against, say, [Lightning Bolt]. It's considered middling mana drain, and the cost scales with distance. An average [Mage] in the espionage business can land and maintain a scry on a person one thousand miles away for a few minutes, or one hundred miles away for ten minutes, or one mile away for half an hour to an hour. They can do this two to five times a day when supplied with mana potions.

"However, it's possible to relay a scrying image through linked devices, and it's common to have a [Mage] on site to scry and relay it back to home base. [Scrying] also works with linked spellcasting—group casting, I mean—to increase range and duration. So in practice, it's expensive but not impossible for a group with means to maintain a permanent scrying rotation on a person thousands of miles away.

"It's much easier to target a creature than a location, especially distant locations, which is why I specified 'scryable location you frequent', as then it's only a matter of time before they see something they shouldn't. But it is possible to scry a location without anyone present, if the caster knows exactly where it is relative to themself.

"By 'landing the spell on me unless they were exceptionally powerful', you mean as a high-leveled person resists an opposing Skill? That's not how [Scrying] works here. There are anti-divination wards, and specialized Skills to detect or oppose scrying, but you can't throw it off by will alone—you can't detect it by will alone, either."

Blai presumes that this is all common-enough knowledge and takes notes on how scrying works if his interlocutor doesn't object. "Oh, I wouldn't need to detect a Golarion scry to resist it, detecting it is a separate spell."